Tag Archives: Porton Wagoner

Earlier this year, Dolly Parton, in partnership with Gaylord Entertainment, unveiled plans for a new $50 million water and snow family fun park in Nashville, near the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center.

On Friday, she unveiled her latest attraction at Dollywood, her theme park in Pigeon Forge, Tenn. The Wild Eagle is a $20 million winged, floorless roller coaster fashioned to look like a bald eagle, and Parton says it’s already boosted sales of season passes.

As for the remainder of 2012, Parton says she plans to spend the time writing -- and not just anything. Parton is crafting a musical about her life story.

“I’ve been writing for a long, long time my life story as a musical,” says the singer, seated in the Chasing Rainbows Museum surrounded by some of her stage dresses in the 1950s area at Dollywood.

“I don’t know how I’m going to do it, if I’m going to do it as a movie, as a series, or if I’m going to do it on stage or some of all, but I’ve just taken off now to write. I’m just trying to find my place, rest a little bit and pray a little more and feel it out. I know that I’ll know exactly what I want to do.”

Parton already has a clear vision of the musical.

“I think about all my life has been,” she says. “I think about my humble days. I think about my parents. I think about my spiritual religious background, so I certainly see my early life like that and being brought up poor, but being positive and driven, very much like the little song ‘Coat of Many Colors,’ just cause you ain’t got money don’t mean you’re poor. You’re rich in dreams.

"I picture my early life in Nashville. I picture myself through the Porter Wagoner days and all of the stuff that went on with that. Then all the things like the Dollywoods and doing business with the big guys. I just picture it sexually, spiritually, successful, things that I am. I am a coat of many colors.”

When she’s finished with it, Parton says the musical will feature some of her biggest hits as well as the songs she’s in the process of writing.